A Lower Mount Bethel Township man was bound over for Northampton County Court action yesterday, after a preliminary hearing before District Justice Michael Koury of Wilson, on charges he sexually assaulted two little girls.

The two girls, now 6 and 10 years old, took the stand to testify against Larry Castner, 33, of the Hillendale area, charged with two counts each of indecent assault, corrupting the morals of a minor and endangering the welfare of children.

Their mother, to whom the girls originally reported the incidents, also took the stand, andthe girls took turns sitting in her lap or the lap of a worker from the Northampton County Children and Youth Division as they testified.

The girls used anatomically correct rag dolls to illustrate the incidents, which took place in August, according to the charges filed by Lower Mount Bethel Township police.

Castner remains free on $5,000 recognizance bond set by District Justice Sherwood Grigg of Roseto, who was scheduled to hold the preliminary hearing on the case on Nov. 26. However, Castner's attorney, Gary Asteak, asked that the hearing be stopped shortly after it began and petitioned County Court for a change of venue on the basis that Grigg had spoken with the two girls prior to the hearing.

Koury bound the case over to court over the objections of Asteak, who said the state failed to provide sufficient evidence to hold his client for court.

"The commonwealth generated a lot of smoke, but no fire," in its testimony, Asteak asserted. Commenting on the fact that both girls testified they had their eyes closed during the incidents, he noted that the older of the two insisted it was Castner who committed the acts because she could tell by his smell.

"This case is too serious, it has too much effect on the defendant's life, to send it to trial on the basis of smell," Asteak contended. "Yeah, I think the case smells."

However, Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Englesson, prosecuting the case with Lower Mount Bethel Township Patrolman Bud Shull, noted that the law doesn't call for "a positive eyewitness identification." He said identification may be made by elements including smell, hearing or other senses. "They weren't looking at him, but they heard, felt and smelled the defendant," Englesson said.

The 6-year-old, the first to take the stand, underwent extensive questioning by Koury, Englesson and Asteak about her knowledge of the difference between truth and a lie. She explained that she knew the truth was good and a lie bad and said that when she tells a lie, "I get yelled at" by her mother. However, when Asteak asked her if she had lied to her mother about anything, she hesitated, then answered both "no" and "yes."

The girl, who was 5 at the time of the incident, said that she and her sister stayed at Castner's house that night. They and another child slept on the floor in a bedroom of the house, she said, and she was sleeping in a sleeping bag, wearing a nightgown and underwear, when Castner came in and, "He did something to me." She used the rag dolls to illustrate the incident. She told Englesson it felt "yucky."

Under cross-examination by Asteak, she said she didn't cry or yell at that time because, "I was scared."

She told her mother of the incident the next night, she said, but never told her older sister.

When Asteak asked the 10-year-old what would happen to her if she told a lie yesterday, she said, "I'd get in trouble." Then, smiling broadly and opening her eyes wide, she added, "And my Mom would kill me." Asteak said, "It can't be that bad," and when the little girl replied, still smiling, that it would be, he dropped that line of questioning.

The 10-year-old testified that she told her mother of a similar incident after her mother had told them they were no longer allowed to visit at the Castner home.

Her mother told her, "Something happened," but wouldn't say what, and her sister was not permitted to tell her, she said. "I begged my mom to tell me why," she said. "I told her something happened to me, too," before the reported incident involving her sister.

She said she had refrained from telling about the incident, which took place when she was 9and which, she said, made her feel "weird" because, "I was embarrassed."

She told Asteak she knew it was Castner who had performed the acts she described, even though her eyes were closed, because she recognized his smell. When Asteak attempted to pin her down on what the smell was, she hesitated before saying it was the smell of his clothing.

The children's mother said she had had a friendly relationship with Castner and his wife and on the night of the incident with the younger girl, they told her it was their wedding anniversary.

She testified that she questioned why they would want to take her children that night when, "I thought they'd want to be alone and fool around."

Castner, she said, got very quiet at that point and put his head in his hands, saying he hadn't had sexual relations with his wife for some time.